Eugene Deutch Bauhaus Wheel Thrown Earthenware Lamp, 1940s

Item Details

Eugene Deutch (1904 – 1959) was a Chicago based master potter of the German Bauhaus school. Completely in charge of his production process, he aimed to create useful and classically modern items including bowls, vases, pitchers, tumblers, as well as lamps. He created his art using selective clays on his hand-built kick wheel.

Although born in Budapest his carpentry career took him to France in 1923. It was in Paris where he took classes in sculpture and other crafts. In 1927 he joined his brother Alfred in Chicago who had an established ceramics business. He took classes at the Art Institute Chicago and opened his own studio in 1934 and was one of the founders of the Midwest Designer-Craftsmen. Deutch worked to marry art with purpose and was quoted in 1952 as saying ‘I design to express something I feel and the result represents my best effort to create something decorative and functional.’ He sold his ceramics out of his studio only twice a year and through a handful of select galleries. During his life in Chicago many of the experts of the city became his patrons and friends, including Frank Lloyd Wright.
Some of his accomplishments include having pieces selected for the Ceramic National exhibition in Syracuse, New York, in 1937; honorable mention in the 1955 International Exposition of Ceramics and showing in numerous exhibitions such as Useful Objects at MOMA (1946) and the US Designer-Craftsmen Show at the Brooklyn Museum (1953). Today his work is owned by the University of Chicago’s Smart Museum, the Racine Art Museum, the Dallas Museum of Art, the Chicago History Museum and the Milwaukee Museum of Art.

Condition

- some light surface scuffs; crack near “E.D.” initials. Pitting in glaze due to firing process and glaze fit to the clay.

Dimensions

Item #

19CHI008-007